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Are You Cross-browser Compatible

Back in the days when IE had some 90+ percent of the browser market, many web application developers didn’t really think or care about creating cross-browser compatible apps, as long as it worked for the 90+ percent. And frankly, why should they? The user masses with access to internet were scarce. And those few that fiddled with other browsers and operating systems were considered as outcasts. However, the “glory” days of IE have long passed.

Today, almost 100% of the population has access to broadband connections, and thanks to the era of the mobile, the rebirth of Mac and other companies trying to steal market shares, the browser market has become quite fragmented. Also, with the rise of Web 2.0, HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript, more and more of the logic and presentation in web applications is executed on the browser.

Developers are nowadays pretty familiar with the realm of TDD, Unit tests and CI for automation and effective testing of distinct components. Developers deploy these techniques more and more. But are we equally effective to test the visual experience of our user masses? With potentially millions of people accessing government, public or company sites, can our customers really afford to disregard testing the sites across all browsers?

In this talk I will present tools and techniques to get you started with effective, large-scale automated cross-browser tests. I will propose that such tests can be valuable as acceptance tests and I will also present some of the usual pitfalls and problems developers usually experience when starting off with such tests.